February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“Several advertisements were called to out attention,” said a DOT spokesperson, “for a service that they don’t have approval for.”
The airline, which has been flying between Ireland, Amsterdam, Moscow and Minsk for some years, apparently announced its Boston-Shannon route with receiving DOT approval, even though it had gone through the proper channels and received DOT approval on Feb. 9, 2004 to operate a carrier out of Newark International Airport.
The DOT spokesperson confirmed this, but at press time, a telephone calls to Skynet in the U.S. were not returned.
“This airline did have authority to operate out of Newark,” the spokesperson continued, “but had no authority for Boston.”
She added: “Now we don’t know what they’re doing.”
Gerry Ryan, vice president of Scepter Ireland travel agents, had planned to handle ticketing for Skynet and last week welcomed the new carrier to the transatlantic route.
This week he admitted that there had been a hitch, but insisted that the airline would still start flying the Atlantic soon. “Hopefully, they will get it done this year,” he said.
“They gave every indication of having all the necessary paperwork,” Ryan continued, and added that Scepter would continue to support Skynet once the airline had sorted out its problems.
“Larger airlines are likely to pull out of Shannon in the future,” Ryan said, noting that Scepter’s focus on leisure travel would mean Skynet’s service to Shannon would be a useful one.
Skynet had advertised a one-way midweek ticket of $199 last week. A provisional schedule provided by the company had passengers flying out of Newark every Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday and out of Boston on Saturdays and Wednesdays, once the airline got up and running on June 17.
Tickets were to be booked on the airline’s Web site, www.skynetairline.com, beginning April 2. Now the Web site has been removed.